The Holocaust as history and human rights: A cross-national analysis of Holocaust education in social science textbooks, 1970–2008

Abstract

This article examines Holocaust education in secondary school social science textbooks around the world since 1970, using data coded from 465 textbooks from 69 countries. It finds that books and countries more connected to world society and with an accompanying emphasis on human rights, diversity in society and a depiction of international, rather than national, society are more likely to discuss the Holocaust. Additionally, textbooks from Western countries contain more discussion of the Holocaust, although the rate is increasing in Eastern European and other non-Western countries, suggesting eventual convergence. We also find a shift in the nature of discussion, from a historical event to a violation of human rights or crime against humanity. These findings broadly support the arguments of neo-institutional theories that the social and cultural realms of the contemporary world are increasingly globalized and that notions of human rights are a central feature of world society.

Keywords

Human rights Holocaust education Textbooks

A version of the hierarchical linear model included in this paper was developed for a related project in a seminar conducted by Anthony Bryk, whose comments were most helpful. Work on this paper was funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (200600003). The paper benefited from the related studies of members of Stanford’s Comparative Workshop. We are particularly grateful to John Meyer and Francisco Ramirez for their comments. The study was possible only because of the impressive textbook collection of the George Eckert Institute, in Braunschweig, and the extraordinarily helpful assistance of Brigitte Depner and her staff. In addition, we thank individual colleagues who helped us collect textbooks, including Dijana Tiplic, Suk Ying Wong, Rennie Moon, David Suárez, Marine Chitashvili, Pepka Boyadjieva, Shushanik Makaryan, Marika Korotkova, Gili Drori, Sandra Staklis, Marina Andina, Jaime Quevedo, Nii Addy, Magdalena Gross, and Rebecca Taylor.